Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, I want to have your babies

Admittedly, I’ve been a S.R.C fangirl ever since I first read ‘Oppressed But Not Defeated’. But bearing in mind folk wisdom about heroes – never to meet them, they’ll only be rude and shorter than you expected, and that later in life they may disappoint you by authorising nakedly commercial album re-masters – I must say that despite the sometimes impenetrably academic tenor of her written Spanish, she’s yet to publish anything that didn’t make me sigh and be glad for her existence. Check out the poetics of this open letter published on Ukhampacha News, with its rich allusions to the daily niceties of Bolivian cultures, casual slinging of not-easily-translatable Aymara phrases into discussion and urge to go beyond the good start of laws which outline a new approach, and to start putting flesh on the bones by grounding the legal changes in a holistic re-connection with the environment and ancestral wisdom. Only in not such hippyish phrasing. Most of all, read it for her warning against the temptation to turn the multiple, overlapping and fascinatingly complex political processes in Bolivia into an easily reducible set of new models that fit neatly onto a page.

Community must be reinvented, made to live again. We Bolivians—unlike those in our brother countries—are lucky in that our communal strength has not yet been locked away in museums or reservations, or in archeological sites for tourists. It is this polymorphism, its diverse and ch’ixi character, that has allowed our indigenous community, from the Andes to the Amazon, to still be a dynamic force and a collective creation.

in the long-term context, which no doubt is a Pachakuti cycle (though many idiots confuse it with a millennium, and Evo as the new Indian Christ), the debate itself of the constitution is just an epiphenomenon. The whole world is part of this process; it is an emerging and multiplying clamor to LIVE WELL (not live better), of restructuring our relations with the world, with the land, with the universe and its multiple signs. How great is it that we don’t even talk about that whole “development” thing anymore? It’s fantastic that this shift resonates in the new constitution! But it doesn’t do anything to know those slogans by heart if we can’t grind our own llajwa (traditional Bolivian salsa), or if we waste water like idiots during Carnival or if we get drunk until we lose our dignity or if we don’t look into the eyes of those who talk to us or if we use hired domestic help to do something as simple as serve us water or if we are not saddened every day by the growth of the black stains of bare earth on Illimani.

Second Letter from Obama’s Country
On the Inner Indian and the Reconstruction of Community
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
February 4, 2009

Manuel:

The sword is a nice metaphor for one who wants to debate with elegance and ñeqe, without being weak because it is very masculine, among other things, and at the same time it is as old as the druids. That is why I like the tone that you are giving debate: cordial and with some humor…But all of this talk about “communal modes of production,” my friend, it is better carried out than simply spoken. The little devil of ambition, of power and of flattery has entered the hearts of many people from below and so I don’t believe now is the time to creat new historical and classificatory narratives as our only models. Yes, without a doubt, it is necessary to recreate community and not just praise the existing ones or make them static in maps (key flaw of the new constitution, but for reasons opposite what the other team argues). Ethics, logic, the relationship with the earth and the pacha, ways of talking with animals and plants, of organizing the ethics of the social world, of creating politics without separating them from ritual, etc., exist (if not, where would I be getting this from? Surely not from the anthropologists’ books). But it is necessary to recognize that these arts of doing and being are very hidden and far away, no one notices them; certain yatiris practice them along with many women, young people and people of all ages who are into alternative things, not just in Bolivia but around the world. Therefore they are not exclusive to the “ethnic people,” nor are they the heritage of a few ponchudos. Thus, in my modest opinion based on certain knowledge and understanding, community must be reinvented, made to live again. We Bolivians—unlike those in our brother countries—are lucky in that our communal strength has not yet been locked away in museums or reservations, or in archeological sites for tourists. It is this polymorphism, its diverse and ch’ixi character, that has allowed our indigenous community, from the Andes to the Amazon, to still be a dynamic force and a collective creation. Unfortunately, it only shines when there is serious danger, and shortly later it succumbs, like a sunchu luminaria, to power, the word and instrumental reason.

In my opinion, this collective reinvention is based in a jigsaw puzzle of very diverse sources and in the application of a method that many Aymaras call qhipnayra (I’ll explain it later). This, I believe, allows us to be traditional and modern at the same time. We are futurists and we are able to reach back to our pre-state selves when constructing relations with the world and building a philosophy to accompany it.

In this sense, the new constitution only gives us, as I said earlier, a space to continue debating and to broaden the impact of the debate. But on its own as a text there’s lot of crap in there—like the part about locking Indians in 36 little maps (I’ve sent you my criticism of this, in case it helps you. See Annex 1 link below). Furthermore, in the long-term context, which no doubt is a Pachakuti cycle (though many idiots confuse it with a millennium, and Evo as the new Indian Christ), the debate itself of the constitution is just an epiphenomenon. The whole world is part of this process; it is an emerging and multiplying clamor to LIVE WELL (not live better), of restructuring our relations with the world, with the land, with the universe and its multiple signs. How great is it that we don’t even talk about that whole “development” thing anymore? It’s fantastic that this shift resonates in the new constitution! But it doesn’t do anything to know those slogans by heart if we can’t grind our own llajwa (traditional Bolivian salsa), or if we waste water like idiots during Carnival or if we get drunk until we lose our dignity or if we don’t look into the eyes of those who talk to us or if we use hired domestic help to do something as simple as serve us water or if we are not saddened every day by the growth of the black stains of bare earth on Illimani.

An image of Waman Puma summarizes it very well (I quote it from memory). There’s an elderly traveler with his cane, his wallqipu and his hat, and he says: “Indian astrologer poet, he who knows the rotation of the sun and the moon, of the turning of the seasons, sun, moon, star, eclipse and of the four winds to sow food.” No constitution needs to express that vision of community (the poiesis of the natural and social world, not the separation of agriculture from philosophy, of poetry from science) but rather we must embodying it ourselves in our daily lives.
I invite you then, starting on the 26th, to cure your ch’akhi (hangover) by learning to manage the wisu, the chonta, and the q’urawa (the sword, unlike the q’urawa, is too straight, while the qurawa is soft, flexible, you can even tie your pants with it). Since I don’t know anything about these three things, I place myself among the students, since I like masculine arts more (probably because, at my age, I am already chachawarmi—the duality of man and woman). I don’t have patience for learning the loom anymore and I’m too old to give birth naturally. But for that reason, I ask you that you calls us women friends, not just male friends, you will always have me here, ready to converse with you, hopefully getting beyond the imprisonment of the Spanish language.

So here I am am, in the country of Obama. I arrive on the 26th and so my vote is nothing more than a desire…Such is my luck and for this I pray, friends, that that your little livers continue being little rosaries, without anger or harmful substances, that everyone enters Pachakuti having a little more harmony with our inner Indian, that is both there and not there, but that we know simply exists…It is simply being, as one would say in Castimillano hand in hand with the awichos and awichas who protect us from the other side without us knowing.

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Something that may amuse you – I looked for a translation for some of those terms, with the usual caveats about not-very-translatable words (q’urawa in this case, so much easier), and got Google attempting to translate ay.wikipedia.org for me. Which is very nice of it… except that it tried to translate it from Italian. Which doesn’t work very well, really.